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tv   The Ed Show  MSNBC  March 20, 2013 12:00am-1:00am PDT

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let me finish with a circular firing squad assembled in the republican party. the party began in the years heading up to the civil war.
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you had the whig party, the abolitionists. the whigs were the politics ready to make practical political decisions. in 1860, they all got together behind abraham lincoln. i wonder if they do it again in 2016 in the party's still split in two. the establishment types, they like holding office and are willing to bend a little to get power. the abolitionists are on principle. as for gay marriage, they'd just as soon there not be in gays, period. they're not about to let them have wedding rings and all other parts of straight life. the karl rove winning elections and the abolitionists wing are in for a prolonged situation. 2014 will be tough, but once these two gangs, the palin and rove crowds, have to meet again in 2016, it's not going to be pretty and sure as hell isn't
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going to be a marriage and that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. "the ed show" starts right now. good evening, americans, welcome to "the ed show." i'm michael eric dyson. elizabeth warren takes a stand for working class americans. michele bachmann has seen the light on infrastructure and might be getting off the appalachain trail and heading back to washington and a southern pastor makes a radical stand for justice. but tonight, we start with the tenth anniversary of the ed show. let's get to work. the shock and awe campaign was launched against -- a decade
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later, the forces behind with trying to revise that history. today, donald rumsfeld tweeted ten years ago, the long, difficult work of liberating 25 million iraqis deserve our respect and appreciation. put aside for the moment the evolution in rumsfeld's justification for war. take a moment to offer some appreciation to those who actually deserve our respect. we can start with the lawmakers who voted no on the iraq war resolution and 133 in the house. some argued passionately against the war inside the u.s. capital. >> i weep for my country. i want to events of recent months and the -- no more is the image of america one of strong yet benevolent peace keeper. >> there were even members of president bush's own party who
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broke ranks. former national security adviser wrote an article called "don't attack saddam." there were some republican lawmakers as well. >> we have to remember we have been allies of saddam hussein. we say we know he has certain things, well, we do because we helped provide for them. i mean, we were his ally. >> it's good to -- today is to remember the warnings of u.n. weapons inspector hans blitz. it's a day to acknowledge the admonitions of leaders like general anthony zeni. eric shen who was forced into retirement when he disagreed with the bush cheny strategy.
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if we are truly remembering what it was like ten years ago today, we can't forget the millions of voices who opposed this war and attempts made to margin liz them. if you were a public figure, it was not a wise time to speak out against the administration. actress jeanne was called an iraqi sympathizer. >> saddam must love you and i'm sure -- >> don't even try and do that -- i'm not a saddam hussein apoll gist -- i don't think he said is that great news. >> michael moore was booed off the stage for denouncing the invasion of iraq. so much for these bleeding heart liberals in hollywood. let us not forget the response from around the globe. u.n. secretary annan said the war was illegal. nelson mandela called it a threat to peace. pope john paul ii said the war would not solve problems of man. jesse jackson called on peaceful people everywhere to march until the war was over. let us admire and respect the position of a former president, as well as the words from a future president, it was illinois state senator barack obama who said in 2002, i don't oppose all wars. what i am opposed to is a dumb war. this is a war that cost the lives of anywhere from 110,000 to 1 million civilians. today is not a day to cheer for success.
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but it is a day to remember those who fought hard to avoid the war's tragic consequences. get your cell phones out. >> michael moore was booed off the stage for denouncing the invasion of iraq. so much for these bleeding heart liberals in hollywood. let us not forget the response from around the globe. u.n. secretary annan said the war was illegal. nelson mandela called it a threat to peace. pope john paul ii said the war would not solve problems of man. jesse jackson called on peaceful people everywhere to march until the war was over. let us admire and respect the position of a former president, as well as the words from a future president, it was illinois state senator barack obama who said in 2002, i don't
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oppose all wars. what i am opposed to is a dumb war. this is a war that cost the lives of anywhere from 110,000 to 1 million civilians. today is not a day to cheer for success. but it is a day to remember those who fought hard to avoid the war's tragic consequences. get your cell phones out. i want to know what you think. tonight's question, will the architects of the iraqi war ever admit they made a mistake? text a for yes, b for no to 67622 or go to our blog. i'll bring you the results later in the snow. i'm joined now by congresswoman diona diget. getting your name mixed up here. i'm so hyped to get to this point. congresswoman, you were one of 133 members of the house to vote against this war. take us back to that day and tell us what was going through your mind? >> you know, for me, i'm elected to congress and i take every vote seriously, but the vote to
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innovate a sovereign nation, put our fighting americans at risk and go into this country, it has to be taken very seriously. and i've had several of these votes, of course. but what i look at is this country a threat to our national security. we had the classified briefings. with don rumsfeld and cheney and the whole group. they kept saying we have the weapons of mass destruction. there was a pesky little group of us and we kept saying show us the evidence. show us the evidence. they say, don't worry, we have the evidence. i'm not going to vote to send our fighting men and women into another country and waste all those lives and billions of dollars. just based on frankly on dick cheney's assurance, so i voted no. people did not believe that the white house would lie to them,
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and so they believed that iraq had these weapons, but they didn't and there was never proof they did. >> was it the fact there was no proof that led to your vote? were you objecting to the rush to judgment without imper cal proof. >> al-qaeda was the ones that invaded our sovereignty, killed our citizens and took down the world trade center on that terrible day and i was convinced we had the evidence that afghanistan an the taliban were hiding al-qaeda. when the white house came to us with iraq, they said you have to trust us. i said i'm a member of congress. we have to take this vote very seriously and i'm not going vote to go into this nation and put our men and women at risk as well as the civilians there, as well as the reputation in the world and not to mention we're in the financial problems we're
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in because we fought that war and the other war off budget for ten years. >> sure. >> so, those were all things that went through our minds and ultimately, an act to go to war is an act of conscious. and i think members of congress have to take that the most seriously of any vote they make and there wasn't the evidence and that's why i voted no. >> given the violent downpour of opposition to your dissent, you take a lot of heat. did it ever make you question your judgment? thinking man, maybe i should have gone along? >> well, i never had a moment of regret and as of course the troops marched towards baghdad and they found no chemical weapons, no nuclear weapons, no weapons of mass destructions, it became really clear those weapons did not exist. of course, i became more and more comfortable in my belief. it was the right thing to do. it was a vote of conscious and i
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think probably, the other people in congress who voted that way, we looked at the evidence, the evidence wasn't there and we weren't going to make that vote. even if it costs us our elections and frankly, i was just telling a colleague earlier today, i would say it's in the top five votes that i've taken in my 17 years in congress. >> right. a new report from brown university says the total cost of the war in iraq has been $2.2 trillion. the cost can double or triple when you take interest payments into account. why is it that your republican colleagues don't ever talk about this when they talk about our debt? they never mention this tremendous part of that debt. >> one thing that was so frustrating to a lot of democrats who consider ourselves to be fiscally responsible is of course, you had the bush tax cuts. then right after, you had the attacks on september 11th and
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you had the war on afghanistan, which i supported and almost all of the members of congress did, because those were the people that attacked us. but then, you had the war in iraq and both afghanistan and iraq were fought as quote emergencies, which means they weren't included in the annual deficits. so, now, when they're talking about a budget that cuts student loan programs for gi members, people coming back from iraq and afghanistan now they're not getting their student loans. because this was all fought off budget. i think that's political malpractice on the part of the republican party. they should have budgeted for this. >> well, from a congressional physician of the soul like diana degette, thank you so much. now to dr. james peterson, msnbc analyst and director of africana studies. professor, millions oppose the war, but as you know, and i'm
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sure you remember, their voices were significantly marginalized. give us a sense of how that happened. >> there's a lot of context here. we have to start with the fact that the sort of american ethos in response to 9/11 was a sort of patriotism, people not in line with the government and a very war hawkish administration seemed to be anti-american. so in that environment, the voices that were speaking out against this war, but in that environment, those voices could be muffled and people were being painted as being anti-american because they were pro peace. >> right. mrs. walsh, we saw what donald rumsfeld said on twitter. we saw dick cheney say he would do it all over again and not acknowledge any mistakes. >> the main fault -- i don't spend a lot of time thinking about my faults i guess would be the answer. >> no kind of political introspection there.
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but will history let these men off the hook for what they did? >> no, they're going down in history for a horrible, terrible war. i was going to say a lapse of judgment, but it was not a lapse of judgment. it was a deliberate act. they cooked the evidence. they brow beat people. they would karl rove as their political hench men. the vote was scheduled on the eve of the elections deliberately. i don't want to let democrats off the hook. 29 senate democrats voted to authorize the use of force. some apologized later like john kerry. some brave people came out against it as you showed. barbara boxer, dick durbin, paul wellstone, but there is a tendency among democrats that really worries me. it's to act as though maybe their patriotism is possibly going to be called into question and they're always appeasing these bullies who question their very americanness and we saw that over and over at 9/11 and particularly in the run-up to war. it was a little bit frightening to be against the war as i was. we weren't really singled out and ridiculed, but we were right. they will go down in history as having done the wrong thing. it requires a lot of vigilance to make sure nothing like that happens again. >> given what the congresswoman said earlier, are we still at risk despite their bold and creative witness of a march to
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war of this magnitude or is there more accountability today? >> we would hope so. joan is absolutely right. there's bipartisan kulpaablety that dates back to the clinton administration. just look at the scorecard and this is where the american
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we're talking about an extraordinary cost in human lives and resources and at the end of the day, we didn't have to do this and it wasn't effective. when you look at iraq now as a nation, it has not progressed in the way the liberators said it would progress. i hope the people open their eyes on this occasion to reflect very, very thoughtfully about what has occurred here and it's only doing the people of the united states who can make sure this never happens again. >> the justification on the other side has been look, saddam hussein was a monster. he was evil. getting rid of him was not a bad thing and if that was the ultimate consequence of the iraq war, then so much the better. what do you say to that kind of twisted logic? >> i think there are many monsters, sadly, in the world as we both know and we don't go around invading sovereign countries that did no wrong to us in order to topple them and we have lots of monsters. we've had lots of monsters who remained our friends. >> exactly. >> i just think, i do think we have more oversight now and the people are more skeptical and that it's harder. the same people wopted us to go to war, digging in appeals over, i think there's a latent antiwar
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movement. i think we will not go through it again soon, so that's the good news. but it requires vigilance. >> sure. people tend to forget that frankenstein was not the name of the monster. it was the doctor who created it. >> some are monsters of our own making. >> thank you all so very much. >> thank you. >> remember to answer tonight's question at the bottom of the screen and share your thaults on twitter. and on facebook. i want to know what you think. massachusetts senator elizabeth warren tells a restaurant owner about raising the minimum wage. we'll flip that one, next.
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paul ryan isn't radical enough for some republicans. a new gop plan is calling for even bigger government cuts. and later, find out why gay marriage is causinging a north carolina pastor to stop performing weddings for straight couples. join ed schultz in his new time slot, 5:00 to 7:00 saturday and sunday coming soon. share your thaulgt thoughts with us on facebook and twirt. us on facebook and twirt. we'll be right back. herbal essences smooth and shine collections are back and more irresistible than ever. [ ding ] [ moaning ] [ male announcer ] with rose hips and chamomile... you'll fall in love with your hair... yes! yes! yes! [ male announcer ] ...all over again. herbal essences. say yes again to naturally irresistible hair.
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the minimum wage is not a living wage.
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we have a new number of what the minimum wage should be and it should chain anyone who insists that the minimum wage remain the same. if it kept pace with worker productivity, it would be far higher than what anyone is calling for. >> if we just started in 1960, not the high water mark for minimum wage, but a good time on minimum wage, if we started in 1960 and we said that as productivity goes up, that is as workers are producing more, then the minimum wage is going to go up the same. and if that were the case, the minimum wage today would be about $22 an hour. >> warren was basing this on a
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recent analysis and asked one of the experts a simple question. >> what happened to the other $14.71? >> since early '70s, what we have seen is a divergence in the prosperities of different sections of our population. >> now, that sounds familiar, doesn't it? this chart says it all. the same expert explained that if the minimum wage kept pace with incomes going to the top 1%, the minimum wage would have risen to $33 an hour before the great recession. senator warren was not calling on the minimum wage be raised to $22 an hour, she was -- and the ideal merit based minimum wage. just last week, an attempt to raise the minimum wage to a mere $10.10 an hour was defeated in the house. republicans were unanimous in their opposition. let's turn to david k. johnston. always good to see you, my friend. >> hello, michael.
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>> david, let's begin with the initial premise. besides the almost irresistible question i want to ask you, they'd have a better understanding like the senator who understood pause his son is gay, maybe if they made that kind of money, they'd be sensible. the minimum wage would be about $22 an hour today, right? >> yes. now, remember, most of these low paid minimum wage jobs are not in areas. orchestras can't play a bach any faster and restaurant workers aren't doing anything any faster, but half of all americans with a job, 75 million, make essentially $10 an hour less. they make $26,000 a year or less in wages. and that should be really of deep concern to us. >> yeah.
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that's pretty low. it sounds pretty remarkable that so many people make so little money. so, here is part of senator warren's exchange with the restauranteur who refused to accept raising the wage would raise his meal prices by a dime. >> maybe it's only four -- but if your entrees are $14.40, see how fast i can do the math, are you telling me you can't raise your prices by eight cents? >> you know, typically, when costs rise, we don't actually raise it just four cents. we might go a little higher. that has an inflationary effect on the economy. so you may be talking away the money you just gave that employee through the increase. raise prices throughout the economy. >> i have to say, you've now switched your argument from what it was going to do to your
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business to what it's going to do to the economy. >> very sharp, senator warren. whether a minimum wage increase and why. we've heard all this madness on the other side, especially small business people. we won't be able to pay insurance and the like. is that a real reasonable and persuasive argument? >> no and in fact, we have a real world experiment that tells us about this. in new jersey a few years ago, they raised the minimum wage. they did it in pennsylvania. there was an examination of fast food and it turned out that in new jersey, hiring went up and in pennsylvania, hiring went down. but let me turn this upside down. why aren't we talking about the fact that the total stock market
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is worth less today than in 2000 and yet, the ceos are getting more and more money. if we just turned this argument on its head, we can see that you know, the way we are paying people in america at the top and at the bottom is not relateded to the issues of productivity and profitability. >> so, your point is, those ceos would have to have a steep deklain in wages predicated on their performance. >> that's right. you would see their pay fall. >> exactly. we know the current minimum wage is not a living wage but give us a sense of how bad it is. >> oh, one of the things that we're seeing in our society is people who are walking to work because they can't afford bus fare to go to work. one of my children driving home late from a party snow a man in the snowstorm in rochester going to work because there was no bus service because it was a holiday and gave him a ride to work. i mean, this is ridiculous. if you were a cook in a home as a like downtown abbey, your total compensation was higher than it would be today as a cook
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at a mcdonald's. >> wow. >> 1890. >> that's pretty despairing. give your child an extra hug for us. thank you so much. has michele bachmann gotten so radical she's supporting president obama's policies? later, rush limbaugh says the republican party is being bamboozled by insiders. [ female announcer ] going to sleep may be easy, but when you wake up in the middle of the night it can be frustrating. it's hard to turn off and go back to sleep. intermezzo is the first and only prescription sleep aid approved for use as needed in the middle of the night
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welcome back. republicans have a habit of showing up at the ribbon cutting for projects they voted against.
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congresswoman michele bachmann after being re-elected by barely one percentage point, she's looking for a good photo op. and obama's jobs plan is suddenly looking to invest in infrastructure so long as it's in her district. >> those pushing to expand i-94 to six lanes to st. cloud have an important ally. michele bachmann. she brought a huge -- to the state capital. >> president obama and democrats have proposed government invest mentes in roads and bridges. and the failure to sufficiently invest has consequences. once every four years, the american society of civil engineers comes out with an assessment of the nation infrastructure.
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water, environment, transportation, public facilities and energy. this year's report card has some good news and bad news. the rate improved slightly from the last report card in 2009. that only brought us up to a d plus. to bring our infrastructure up to par, we would need to invest $3.6 trillion by 2020. that would create jobs, boost productivity, repair bridges, roads and water mains and stimulate the economy, but it won't happen unless republicans like michele bachmann get behind president obama's push for infrastructure spending and not just when it makes for a good photo op. >> the republicans are just totally bamboozled and entirely lacking in confidence. >> the national review joins rush limbaugh's attack. tea partiers attack paul ryan
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we all know the ryan budget is bad news. it would hurt the nation's seniors and ignore the millions of americans living in poverty by slashing food assistance, medicaid and voucherizing medicare. it's a high price to pay. especially when mr. ryan himself agrees with speaker of the house john boehner. this country doesn't have an immediate debt crisis. >> do you believe we have an immediate debt crisis?
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>> to borrow a phrase from my friend erskine bowles, we are the healthiest looking horse in the glu factory. we don't right now, but we see it coming. >> some in ryan's own party are attacking his budget because it doesn't go far enough. paul brown of georgia. brown brags he was the first guy to call president obama a socialist, has been critical of the ryan budget. >> it continues to grow the government, to grow debt. >> today, he went even further. in a "new york times" op-ed entitled paul ryan's ax isn't sharp enough -- it fails to address run away government spending, the most pressing problem facing our nation. brown advocates for the elimination of the energy parts. this guy wants to take the federal government out of the education and toss out a few grants to states to handle everything from medicaid to infrastructure. brown is also a member of the
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republican study committee, a group of house conservatives proposing a more aggressive alternative to the ryan plan and promising to balance the budget in just four years. the op-ed comes just a day after the rnc's autopsy report. yet that, too, is getting attacked from the right for not sticking to so-called conservative ideals. >> the republicans are just totally bamboozled right now and they are entirely lacking in confidence. they think they got landslided and they didn't. the republican party lost because it's not conservative. it didn't get its base up. >> i'd say it's always great to see rush limbaugh making illusions to spike lee's malcolm x. let's bring in ryan grim -- and democratic strategist chris kofinas. the budget proposal, how bad is
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it when ryan's proposal is considered not radical enough? are we in pretty bad shape? >> i don't know where they think they're going with this. coming out and sayinging you want to raise the social security retirement age to 70, you want to raise the medicare retirement age to 70 and balance the budget within four years with these insanely draconian cuts an first of all, the math doesn't add up. because in order to balance the budget, they would have to cut so much spending that it would tank the economy and they would lose revenues. the way you balance the budget is to grow the economy and get more revenue. not by tanking it and givinging it away. >> so in light of what was said sh these proposals offered by
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brown and the republican committee would hurt citizens across the country. how far can the republican party go here? how will they be able to survive with these kind of not only unpopular proposals, but proposals that make no fiscal sense. >> i think they can go very far. right to the bottom. this is a party right now that's torn between a crazy wing and a wrong wing and not sure who's going to win, but they're really fighting it out. i don't understand it because there is no chance this passes. there's no chance this passes and goes anywhere. there's no chance the president would sign this. it's a political statement. so then you have to ask yourself what is the political statement for? it's to mobilize a disaffected base and that's the part they still do not understand. the reason why they lost the election is not because the republican base didn't come out. they lost because the country's changing. until they figure out that, they're going to keep opposing
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this and serving it up on a platter for democrats. >> given the fact that the fighting wing and other wing, maybe the chicken wing as well, the inability to step up to the plate here, the rnc report, rush limbaugh's not happy with it. what do republicans do? how do they figure their way out of this corner? >> it's time for them to go in the church we say to the alter. they need a wake up all call. it's really time to have a come to jesus moment with not only the policies, but who the messengers are. speaking of the ryan budget, you have a document that essentially says these are the things that our priorities and we've attached numbers to them. that's how much this matters. this is why the american public should pay attention to this. no, it's not going to pass. it's going to go to the house floor with other budgets and die
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right there because the upper chamber has no interest in ryan's priorities. when you look at the gop great opportunity plan or whatever it is, you know, it's not a great opportunity. there's no growth in opportunity plan rather because at the end of the day, you have the same tired messages and they're not ready for a browner, newer america. >> given the fact they're not ready, what kind of america are they ready for because with this squabbling going on, which is not good for them from a pr perspective. what do they do to kind of get themselves going on a track that makes them appealing? >> i think what you have to realize is that there's no they. there are, it's not as if everybody speaking for the national party and actually really cares that much about the national party. you have and they say there's sort of two parties. the national party, which is tanking and then the governor's party, which is doing well and they are. they have something like 30
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governors. there's also the house republican party. they control the house and through gerrymandering, if they can keep getting a bunch of super pac money, there's no reason they can't hold on to this house for a long time, which means there are individuals within the party that have nice little perges. sure, they don't have the white house. they might not take back the senate for a while, but life is not so bad for them. so, they come out with this budget that's off the rails, but in their districts, it worked for them and for these, and then for these republican governors, it looks fine to them because they look moderate. >> angela, given that fact then, say they didn't want a browner america so to speak, what do they do to reach out to those roots they've done historically bad with recently? african-american people horribly, latinos with this flip-flopping on the immigration issue.
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what kind of ways can you imagine, get their car back on the road and get out of that ditch. >> first, they have to acknowledge that this gop plan, opportunistic at its best. here we are, november 2012 and there was this grand plan to you know, institute voter i.d. laws and laws that were terrible. so since they couldn't steal the vote then now, they're going to try to earn the vote the right way. second, i think they have to speak to the issues that matter. they have to start sounding like people who are accepting of all americans of all walks of life with different ideals. everybody doesn't have to be cut from the same cloth and doesn't have to be this template model of what a republican should look like. >> given what angela just said, the tea party has really come deereded the party at certain levels or hijacked it. how do they stand up to the tea party without losing a serious purchase on the conservative almost here? conservatives are not identical with the tea parties. how do they make that distinction? >> i'm not sure they can. i think the tea party and the
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way that they have mobilized themselves scares everyone who is a current member of congress to death. because they're afraid that if they go too far to the center, they're going to be primary. so this is constant threat. by the way, even if it's not there, it's the bogeyman that sits there waiting to arise. so their problem i think is until they come to terms with the fact they will continue to lose at least national elections, yeah, they'll win on a state by state base i but until they come to the fact they're not going to win nationally unless they move more to the center and moderate more on social issues, i'm not sure things change. >> we'll see what happens. thank you so very much. still to come, a north carolina pastor stands up for equal rights. we'll have all the details ahead.
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welcome back. there are some exciting changes happening here at msnbc. it was announced today steve
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kornacki will be the new host of "up." he's replacing chris hayes on weekends from 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. tonight, i asked you will the architects of the iraq war ever admit they made a mistake? 5% say yes. 95% say no. coming up, a man of the cloth takes a stand for social justice on tobacco road. that's next. in tonight's big finish, a small southern church community is taking a stand against state law in its own traditions. the congregation asking what would jesus do about same-sex marriage. the pastors at church in winston
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in tonight's big finish, a
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he's replacing chris hayes on weekends from 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. chris hayes will be replacing the ed show and the ed show will be moving to saturdays and sundays from 5:00 to 7:00. plus, don't forget the special reair of hubris. there will be a one-hour wrap up at 10:00. tonight, i asked you will the architects of the iraq war ever admit they made a mistake? 5% say yes. 95% say no. coming up, a man of the cloth takes a stand for social justice on tobacco road. that's next. [ female announcer ] going to sleep may be easy, but when you wake up
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in tonight's big finish, a small southern church community is taking a stand against state law in its own traditions. the congregation asking what would jesus do about same-sex marriage. the pastors at church in winston salem, north carolina, have decided to stop holding marriage ceremonies in the sanctuary until there's equality for all members. last spring, voters made sure they passed an all out institutional ban on same-sex unions. the united methodist church doesn't recognize them either. this sunday, the green street church had enough. the pastor wrote it is
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unconscionable that our denomination denies ministry to some while making available to others based on the identity of lgbtq people. green street church went public with its decision after sunday services and even invited the local media to ask questions. >> just part of who we are as a church. we're a welcoming community. one of our phrases we like to use on sunday mornings is all means all. whoever wants to come here and worship with us is welcome. >> all means all. the pastor says the culture is changing and the polls prove this point. support for marriage equality has grown steady, but we don't need a poll to answer the
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question, what would jesus do about marriage equality? the church believes it has the answer. i'm joined by steven petro who wrotes civil behavior, a column on lbgt issues "the new york times." amendment one was a setback, so how meaningful is it for green street and other churches to take a stand with this extraordinary display here? >> it's great to be with you tonight and i spoke to the pastor this afternoon and asked him the question. how important is what happened there and he said it's mind blowing. i think he's right. we look at what's happening in the march towards marriage equality, we have hillary clinton who came out for it yesterday, senator rob portman. burr when you look at north carolina, it's been a dark state since last year. nearly two-thirds of the voters approved this ban on same-sex marriage and in forsythe county, which is where this church is, a majority of folks voted for that
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amendment. when you see what's happening from this little church in a small town, it is mind blowing and i think it's evidence we're going to see more bright lights in the south and across the nation when it comes to this wave for same-sex marriage. >> steven, how is your shift over -- a gender quake or sexual orientation quake is going on between our common lives together? >> i do. it's so gratifying to see this little burst of life come from this little church over the weekend. we also just saw in asheville tonight, that county voted to extend domestic partner benefits for same sex both to county employees. but what was really interesting about this church, 400 congress gantts, a leadership council of 18, this minister who grew up in the methodist church, his dad was a methodist minister. there was no dissent.